Electrochemical devices are used extensively in clinical applications to detect electrical activity in living systems as in the case of the electrocardiogram (ECG) and the electroencephalogram (EEG). They are also widely used in the clinical analysis of biological fluids.
Electrochemical sensors can be devised to sense a wide range of species of interest (analyte) including electrolytes, blood gases, metabolites, drugs and hormones. This, together with the relative ease of their fabrication and use, makes them ideally suited to health care applications. They are, for example, sensitive, selective, compatible with whole blood samples, require relatively small sample sizes and are less prone to interferences, than other commonly used methods. The small size of such devices, the fact that few, if any, external reagents are required and the relatively simple instrumentation involved makes them desirable for use in emergency, critical care and surgical settings.
Other applications of electrochemical sensors include personal dosimetry for monitoring occupational exposure to toxic substances, chemical process monitoring and control, microbial process monitoring and the control of prosthetic devices.
There is a need for improved electrochemical sensors which are dependable, versatile, stable on standing and in storage and inexpensive to manufacture so that many of the traditional disadvantages of such sensors (i.e., poisoning, drifts and offsets) can be minimized or even eliminated by disposing of the device after a single use.